Pokemon.com has confirmed that the next Modified format will be Next Destinies and on, as reported the other day. BW33 and higher will be legal.

In addition to this, Pokemon has also announced that there will soon be a Black and White-on format! It will start in late 2014 for all sanctioned tournaments. So don’t sell your B/W cards!

A New Format for 2015

In addition to announcing our 2014 rotation, we are also pleased to give players a sneak peek at one of the changes that they will see after next year’s expansion rotation.

Starting in late 2014, a new TCG format will be joining the familiar Modified format as a legal option for sanctioned Pokémon events of all sizes. Because this new format will allow players to use all sets from Black & White on, players will have even more options when designing a winning deck!

We will provide more details as we near the end of the 2014 tournament season!

For this to happen, it must mean that the new X/Y cards will be just as compatible power-wise as the upcoming X/Y cards if they’re all going to be part of the same format (it also might explain why EX Battle Boost is introducing new EX cards this late – they will probably continue into X/Y). If that’s the case, perhaps we will skip EX Battle Boost after all and release its new cards across our X/Y sets. This may all be an effort to sync the card game around the world (or to eventually be able to), especially since EX Battle Boost re-released a bunch of old B/W series EX cards for new Japanese players to get hold of and a lot of our EX cards are already easily accessible through tins. Why else would Japan release a bunch of old B/W cards with a set name like “EX Power Boost” if they have no reason to promote B/W cards, especially when X/Y is right around the corner? Perhaps TPC is going to sync both the release schedule of its sets and with this news today in light of the existence of EX Battle Boost, the global format as well (or at least just the format). But of course this is all just wild speculation at this point and that may be looking way too deeply into things.

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